Photograph of Eighth Evacuation Hospital in winter at Pietramala, Italy. 1944-45.

Photograph of nurses packing up to move. 1944-45.

Photograph of Eighth Evacuation Hospital on the move. 1944-45.

Photograph of celebrity entertainer Marlene Dietrich. 1944-45.

Staige D. Blackford, professor of internal medicine at the University of Virginia hospital, organized the Eighth Evacuation Hospital and acted as chief of medicine with Dr. E. Cato Drash as chief of surgery and Ruth Beery as chief of nurses. The unit sailed in November 1942 for North Africa and served there until September 1943 when it crossed to Italy in the wake of the Allied invasion. The ship bearing their equipment was sunk on the Mediterranean crossing and the unit had to scrounge for more. They followed the American army north, operating in tents pitched in the cold, snow and mud of the mountainous Italian winters. By the war's end they had treated 93,000 patients in their hospital and out-patient departments.